


All the Kingdoms of the World

by Banhus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Mild Theology, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 14:49:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19253365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Banhus/pseuds/Banhus
Summary: The thing which stuck with Crowley the most, from the little-Apocalypse-that-couldn’t, was how close it had all been. They’d been very, very lucky, and after several thousand years of doing Aziraphale’s job on occasion, he had a natural suspicion of luck.(Or: Crowley can't leave well enough alone.)





	All the Kingdoms of the World

**Author's Note:**

> Extra thanks to enthugger for fixing my pacing issues.

The thing which stuck with Crowley the most, from the little-Apocalypse-that-couldn’t, was how _close_ it had all been. If the nuns hadn’t accidentally shuffled the antichrist to Tadfield, if Agnes Nutter hadn’t been exactly right, if Adam had loved humanity just a little less, in the end - well, they’d been very, very lucky, was all, and after several thousand years of doing Aziraphale’s job on occasion, he had a natural suspicion of luck. An incredible string of happenstances like that smelled of _intervention_ , and looked like moves in a bigger game plan. Big enough, in fact, that Crowley wasn’t entirely sure what they were even playing anymore. One of those newfangled games with all the dice, probably.

“Well, it _is_ ineffable,” Aziraphale said to him, when he brought it up. Crowley had draped himself across one of the overstuffed couches in Aziraphale’s bookshop, and Aziraphale gently moved his feet to the side so he could sit and read the mail. 

“Yeah, but it’s a lot of effort to put in for something _not_ to go off.” 

Aziraphale hummed noncommittally, and handed over a brightly coloured folder suggesting truly, staggeringly massive savings. “This is one of yours, I think.”

Crowley made an appreciative noise at the creative use of statistics, then lobbed it in the new paper bin, which was shaped like a stylised rocket ship. The bookshop had gone back to normal after the fire, mostly; Adam had left several lovingly dogeared copies of _Swallows and Amazons_ tucked in next to the ‘Buggre Alle This’ Bible, and a complete, leather-bound first edition of _Just William_ in the window. Crowley kept finding small things Adam had added, and while he mostly approved - the kraken showing up on the edges of all the maps was a nice touch, he thought - it also irritated him the same way watching Aziraphale trying to do stage magic did. The bookshop had burned down, and been put back together imperfectly; it was like catching the flicker of the coin as Aziraphale palmed it, a reminder that it was a trick. 

“Don’t you wonder about the plan at _all_?” Crowley asked.

“In _effable_ ,” Aziraphale said, and slit the back of a lavender envelope with a neat flick of his knife. “Oh, look, Crowley, we’ve been invited to a party, how nice.” 

Crowley elbowed himself far enough off the cushions to peer over Aziraphale’s shoulder. The invitation was from Newt and Anathema, who were having a non-denominational celebration of love that very carefully tiptoed around the word ‘wedding.’ 

“You’ll send flowers, I suppose,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale looked at him, horrified. “We have to go. They invited us! It would be rude not to.”

People who’d been through _stuff_ together tended to fall into one of two categories, in Crowley’s experience. Either they clung to each other like limpets, developing an immortal bond of fellowship and brotherhood, et cetera, et cetera, or they, very sensibly, never saw each other again. _We nearly watched each other get wiped off the face of the Earth!_ wasn’t exactly a memory built for fond reminiscing, Crowley thought, and he’d assumed that at least Anathema would fall into the second category as well. Still, it appeared that the very human urge to gather a large amount of people and get absolutely hammered in a field had won out.

“I _am_ rude, Angel.” Crowley pointed out. “Frequently.” 

“But they’re such kind young people. And they’ll have cake, probably, and it’ll be ever so much less fun if you aren’t there.” Aziraphale gave him a small, hopeful smile. 

There was an expression that went: _if you give the devil a finger, he’ll take the whole hand_. Crowley had picked it up in Copenhagen in the early nineteen hundreds, and spent a happy few years drawling it at people whenever appropriate before realising that Aziraphale was far better at taking the whole hand, as it were. Suggest to Aziraphale that a finger might exist, somewhere, and he’d thank you so much for lending him a hand, most kind, truly, however would he manage without you. Which was, of course, how Crowley found himself driving Aziraphale to Tadfield three weeks later. He’d driven the Bentley since it had been reconstituted, scowling furiously at the dashboard for the first five miles each time, daring the car to have changed even _slightly_. He hadn’t driven Aziraphale since then, however. It was fine, mostly; Aziraphale put on Dvořák and hummed along to the lyrics, and when they hit the M25 orbital, Crowley swallowed hard and tightened his hands on the steering wheel. It wasn’t just that the Bentley had been very much on fire the last time he’d driven on the M25, but that a lot of things had been either on fire or imminently so at that point, starting with the bookshop and most of the planet, and ending with the pillar of hellfire in Heaven, and he didn’t really appreciate the reminder. Especially not with Aziraphale in the seat next to him, tapping out the beat of ‘The Show Must Go On.’ After seeing his first demon dissolve in holy water, Crowley had spent the better part of a decade extremely drunk. They were demons; they weren’t supposed to just froth into nothing like evil alka-seltzer. It was ignoble, and rather besides the point of being immortal. Of course, hellfire was worse. There was a _smell_. 

“Maybe it was just luck,” Crowley said. “ _Someone_ knows we’ve earned some at this point. Blind, dumb luck.” 

“What’s that, my dear?” 

“I _said_ , maybe the apocalypse not going off was luck.” 

Aziraphale gave him a slightly confused look, and turned down the volume on the cassette player. “We _were_ lucky, I suppose. Crowley, are you quite alright?”

“Yes, but -” Crowley gave the sort of uncomfortable squirmy shrug that suggested a good deal more vertebrae than he currently had. 

“We shouldn’t look a gift eucatastrophe in the mouth,” Aziraphale said, and then, after a pause: “anyway, I did try to ask - God Herself, I mean - what the point was, and it’s not like she’s answering my questions. Or anyone’s, really. I suppose that would ruin the ineffability.”

Aziraphale had made some vague murmurings to the effect of God not really speaking to anyone after Eden over the years, but Crowley’d always sort of assumed it was more along the lines of God getting sick of hanging out with Gabriel and Uriel and Metatron all the time and popping out for a quick coffee and a smoke. God not speaking to Aziraphale when he asked seemed a much greater cause for concern. 

“You couldn’t - ask where She’s gone? Get some pointers? Metatron must know, or Jesus -”

Aziraphale did that thing where he didn’t meet Crowley’s eyes. 

“They _don’t_?”

“Metatron won’t say, but I don’t think he does know where God is. And, um. Jesus. We - misplaced him.” 

Crowley inadvertently put too much pressure on the speeder, and the car jumped a good ten meters forward, narrowly missing a very confused flock of geese.

“ _You misplaced Jesus_?”

“Well, we assumed that you didn’t have him - lovely boy, that one, and it’s not like he won’t be back to sit at God’s right hand and part the sheep from the goats and all that, so we decided, best not to worry.”

Crowley had stopped paying attention to Jesus around the time Ælfric of Eynsham got really into descriptions of the Harrowing of Hell. All the lovingly done illuminations of Jesus tromping through Crowley’s old place stepping on demons seemed a bit, well, rude. Still, it wasn’t that he hadn’t gotten on well enough with Jesus when he’d met him. A bit get-thee-behind-me-ish, but not nearly so bad as some of the higher ranked angels, and, besides, he’d actually liked people. Not just when they had washed up proper and were praying, but messy, confused, occasionally selfish people. Crowley couldn’t sense love anymore, but he could sense hate, or annoyance, or disdain, and Jesus, standing on a mountaintop, watching a caravan driver on the road below cuss up a storm trying to figure out how to attach the spare wheel to a broken cart, hadn’t felt like anything at all. Crowley was still a little disappointed Jesus hadn’t taken him up on his offer of ditching the crucifixion for all the kingdoms of the world. It had been a really good temptation, he thought, he’d written a speech up special and everything. 

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Forgive me, but I couldn’t help but notice - you’ve been a little distracted these past few weeks, and you keep bringing up -”

“We don’t know when the next apocalypse will happen.” Crowley said.

“ _If_ there’s a next one.” 

“Right. We don’t know anything, and we’re not going to get a helpful heads up from home office next time. I mean, catch Hell letting me deliver the Antichrist ever again.” 

“There’ll be signs. We’ll just have to watch out for the kraken, and the rivers turning to blood, and the little lamb opening that book with all the seals on it.”

Crowley paused for a moment, wondering how he’d manage it with his hooves, then said, “it’ll be too late then. It’ll already be happening.”

Aziraphale didn’t say anything, but picked nervously at the hem of his waistcoat for a few moments before reaching out and putting a tentative hand on Crowley’s arm. They crossed the metaphysical border into Tadfield like that, passing from a light drizzle into a perfect summer afternoon, the leaves on the trees shining like emeralds in the aftermath of rain, a small brook that was practically begging for someone to float a newspaper boat down it bubbling alongside the road. 

—

When Aziraphale and Crowley had left Tadfield after the apocalypse, crossing the boundary in the opposite direction, they’d both felt it at the same time. Aziraphale had wilted a little, looking around the bus, which had suddenly sprouted a few more patches in the felt on the seats and a faint smell of chlorine, and Crowley’d yawned to even out the sudden metaphysical pressure change in his ears. He had miracled up a pack of gum, and offered one to Aziraphale, wondering if he could stick his under the seat after without the angel noticing. 

“No, thank you. I think we’re through,” Aziraphale had said. “I wonder if that will fade, in time.” 

“Adam’s human, isn’t he?” Crowley had said. “Mortal. So it will.”

“Oh. I suppose.” 

They’d watched the motorway blur past the window for a bit. Someone had left their long beam headlights on, and Aziraphale’d switched them off for them with a casual flick of his finger. A thought occurred to Crowley.

“Does God love people?”

Aziraphale had given him an almost affronted look. “Of course She does. All creatures great and small. Even sparrows.”

“No, really. You can sense love. If She loves them, _really_ loves them, shouldn’t the whole world feel like Tadfield?” 

“I don’t think so,” Aziraphale had said thoughtfully. “Tadfield is loved, but it’s a child’s love. It’s huge, and overwhelming, and it tries to reshape the world to what pleases it best. God loves us like an adult; enough to let us be what we are. It would feel different, I think.”

“Would?” Crowley’d said, putting a leg up on the back of the seat in front of him. “You can’t feel it, then.”

Aziraphale had given him an apologetic smile. “It’s hard to tell. After all, I _do_ care for the world. It always feels a little loved to me.”

—

Crowley thought about that conversation a lot, and especially while watching Newt and Anathema blink at each other besottedly throughout the entire party, oblivious to the festivities going on around them. Being oblivious took some doing; it was a _very_ good party, in the end. Anathema and Newt had set up a pavilion on a low meadow in in the bend of a river, and from the far riverbank a pair of swans watched warily as the whole party devolved into well-meaning anarchy. There was, in fact, cake, a great leaning tower of it, and small quiches and sandwiches and pimms and lots and lots of wine. Crowley rather suspected there had been even more wine, to start; the Them had commandeered the table closest to the river and were very solemnly drinking raspberry cordial out of a Château Beaumont bottle. Adam had his powers mostly under control, but like a bad stamp, the corners still tended to come unstuck however much you pressed them down. Aziraphale happily wandered around speaking to whoever was in earshot (except Madame Tracy. They saw each other across the room, and immediately engaged in the timeless dance of people who knew rather more about each other than was comfortable and were dealing with this by fiddling with their drinks and avoiding eye contact.) However, once the food had been eaten and the sun had set in an absurdly picturesque manner, the sky blushing a tender pink well after it should have been fully dark, Aziraphale pulled a chair up next to Crowley’s. They were at the back of the pavilion, as far from the dance floor as was physically possible without tipping onto the grass. Aziraphale poured a generous portion of what smelled like much better whiskey than the label indicated into Crowley’s glass.

“Thanks, Angel,” Crowley said, tipping his chair back on its hind legs to look up. Beyond the edge of the tent, the stars were starting to come out. He’d done some nice work, back in the old days, when things were more… malleable. Him and Lucifer, he supposed, but God didn’t hold a grudge that extended to good handiwork. 

“They look happy, don’t you think?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley crashed his chair back to the floor. “Hm?”

Aziraphale nodded at Anathema and Newt, who were trying to figure out how to slow-dance and mostly failing. 

Crowley watched them wobble about for a moment. “Yeah. I suppose.”

“I was a bit worried to start, getting married - well, handfasted - so quickly and all, but I do think it’ll all work out.” 

“It’s not quick. Not for her,” Crowley said, and seeing Aziraphale’s confused expression, took a swig of his whiskey and continued: “look. She’s had that book of - whatsit, nice and accurate prophesies her entire life. She’s been told she’ll meet a nice and accurate boy at the end of the world. _Her_ nice boy. And then -”

“-and then the world ends,” Aziraphale said.

“Exactly. Then the world ends. Humans are creative about this sort of thing. She’s probably got lots of things she’d like to do with a boy like that. Eat oysters. See the world. Whatever - whatever that is,” he gestured at Newt, who was managing to miss every single beat of the music with metronomic precision. “But she’s not going to get to do any of them because the world’s going to end. It’s going to end a lot sooner than she wanted, and he’s just going to be gone.” Crowley frowned down at his drink.

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale said quietly. 

Crowley slouched a little, hunched his shoulders up and fiddled with the rim of his glass. “Anyway -”

“I was thinking -” Aziraphale began at the same time. Crowley flicked a surprised glance up at him. Aziraphale gave him a small smile, and Crowley, feeling like all of his internal organs were trying to climb into his throat at once, carefully reached out and took his whole hand. It was soft and dry. Crowley ran his thumb across the back of Aziraphale’s fingers.

“I was _thinking_ we should go on holiday,” Aziraphale said, his voice a little unsteady. “We’ve - I mean, we’ve been lots of places, but it’s always been for work. It might be nice to go somewhere just to -”

“- appreciate the beauty of God’s creation?” Crowley suggested wryly.

Aziraphale looked at him, his eyes very warm. “Exactly, yes.”

Crowley swallowed. Well. There was no sense in letting a perfectly good temptation go to waste, after all, and Aziraphale was still watching him, achingly earnest, a small piece of that great, unconditional love visible in his face. _His_ small piece, and despite it all, Crowley wanted to offer everything up before it.

“In that case,” he said, finding his voice as he went, “behold, below you, the kingdoms of man! Now, Greece is particularly nice this time of year -”


End file.
